One would give up and accept this futility but I had 2 reasons to keep trying to figure out why:

my co-worker's battery would consistently hold twice as much charge as mine - by the time I was at 50%, he was at 75%

a wide range of responses on Internet forums and blog posts suggested some people experienced excellent battery life, while others, like me, did not have as much luck

I received feedback from many people that the solution outlined here has helped them double their battery lives not just on their Android phones but also their Pres, Windows Mobile, and others. These people, like me, did not realize the drastic effect of the settings described here on battery life.

I thought I tried everything:

I kept WiFi and Bluetooth off when I didn't need them (I even got an app that turned WiFi on and off on schedule - Timerriffic; unfortunately until Hero gets Android 2.0 we won't see automatic Bluetooth scheduling)

I tried to use the Spare Parts app which provided insight into battery usage history. I did not, however, find out anything significant

I tried to avoid using GPS altogether - at one point Spare Parts told me GPS usage by Google Maps, Camera, and Bump were 5-6 hours each, even though I turned the GPS off. I think it's a bug in Spare Parts itself or what Android was recording but it made me paranoid.

I got a task manager (Advanced Task Manager) to see what apps are running and make sure especially heinous is eating up my resources. It would also automatically kill long running apps and certain apps I know I don't use and which I can't uninstall, such as IM, Gmail (I use Mail), and Finance.

On some days, I stopped using the phone altogether, just to see how long it would last. The result, however, was the same.

Nothing worked. Consistently, my phone would run down to 80% by the time I got to work and by about 3pm, it would be at 50%.

The Solution

Finally, a few days ago, when comparing my phone with my co-worker's, I noticed he didn't set up automatic email checking, opting in for the manual method instead. I, on the other hand, set up my email the day I got my Hero and never revisited the settings since. "How much power can downloading emails suck out?" I thought. Boy, was I wrong…

This solution is for people using the Mail app - not the Gmail app. The Gmail app uses the push method of getting emails - not pull, but doesn't suit my needs, which is why I am using the Mail app.

Turns out a LOT. I had 3 email accounts and they were checked at the following intervals:

my gmail was being checked every 5 minutes - I wanted near real-time notification but could not even fathom the consequences at the time

my beerpla.net account was hit every 15 minutes

my Plaxo work Exchange email fired every 30 minutes

In order to change these intervals, load up each email account's inbox, click Menu, find Settings, go to Send & Receive and then Set Download Frequency.

After I set each email account to check every hour instead, my battery life improved dramatically. To be fair, I watched the battery use for the last 3 days without changing my usage habits and recorded the results.

Here they are:

by the time I left for work in the morning, before the change I would oftentimes be between 85 and 90% battery. After the change, I was at 95-97%.

by lunch time, my phone would usually run down to 50-60%. After the change, the battery had 75-80% juice.

by 9-10pm, after I came back from work, I would usually need to put the phone on a charger because it was <15%. After the change, I was at least at 50%!

The Side Effect

Lately, I started to realize that having email notifications pop up this often was actually more distracting than useful. I was losing concentration and constant context switching made me less productive.

The fix for my battery problem was, incidentally, also the fix for my concentration problem.

Conclusion

Be very much aware of your email polling intervals or they will suck all the life out of your phone.

I would love to hear about your experiences with tweaking email settings and the effects those tweaks had on your battery life, as well as other dramatic Android battery saving tips. Feel free to share in the comments.

As far as using the Gmail app for email - I have 3 email accounts I want to check on my phone and Gmail only supports one if I understand it correctly - gmail. Additionally, it seems slower and less powerful than the mail app. I see now you suggest connecting multiple email accounts to Gmail, but it seems it can either be done on a one-time basis as an import or continuously using POP3. However using the Mail app allows me to use IMAP, so that I can enjoy its benefits (syncs read, deleted, etc emails with my Outlook).

Your solution may just work for a lot of people who don't have complicated needs like me. Thank you.

http://www.plaxo.com Quang

I'm offended. We all know that I'm the one that got the idea that it was your emails destroying your battery. You simply did extensive testing to confirm that it was the emails.

http://beerpla.net Artem Russakovskii

Details, details, Quang. This coming from a guy who still can't clone his harddrive to his SSD? :)

BTW, my SSD shipped a few minutes ago.

Kelly

Awesome, thanks for the tip. I don't like the phone checking my mail every few minutes anyway, I prefer to look when I want to. I just reset mine to every 2 hours.

Ted

I changed my settings to check e-mail every hour. I did this about two weeks ago. No change in battery drainage. I then powered my phone off and powered back on and voila, my awake time is now at 3%. Don't know if everyone will need to do this but it helped me...

I had gone through multiple Hero's through sprint before I had one that had a good battery. I love the Android platform and almost gave up on the phone due to this issue. I am very glad I got it fixed.

will sung

Hi hi!
I'm not sure if I'm doing this wrong but ive changed my settings for my email to update manually but notifications still pop up automatically to advise I have a new email.
I did this through settings in my email inbox. Any ideas about what I may be doing wrong?
Many thanks in advanced.

http://beerpla.net Artem Russakovskii

Not sure what would do that - maybe you have both the Gmail app and the mail app or 2 mail apps?

Aaron Harding

My battery lasted pretty much exactly 24 hours, or less.

Just changed my e-mail settings to once a day, Facebook and Twitter settings to two hourly.

I really liked the notification feature, but if my battery life is improved by changing these, I'm going to be both happy and sad. Happy cause my battery life has been improved, but sad because I liked the whole 'almost-instant-notification'.

Lance

Would it be worst on the battery life if you set your server email account to send a text notification to the phone? This would be instant notification and you can just start the email client on mobile phone when you want to. Note: I am considering getting the htc hero on an unlimited text plan and I've only use phone for talking only... but would like make the leap

http://beerpla.net Artem Russakovskii

Lance, I don't know about you but to me it would be too annoying and slow, as the text would probably not include the link to your Android email client.

It would most likely be more battery efficient though, as it essentially emulates push email, except with even less data than email.

Cody Kloepfer

This is very helpful information, I also have a Sprint Hero and it doesn't even last a day without needing a mid day charge. Once I get home, I will apply your fix and enjoy the all day battery life.

http://twitter.com/thefatrat Andy King

what about the 'as items arrive' setting in mail.app? is that not true push?

http://beerpla.net Artem Russakovskii

I think it is but I'm not 100% sure and I'm not sure what effect it has on the battery.

Dustin

YA totally worked for my touch. Thank you.

http://www.AndroidPolice.com Artem Russakovskii

You're welcome. :-]

gabriele vidali

i'm setting most email i receive as spam to solve the problem radically

france traveller

I am somewhat of a techno-peasant. But when I go to inbox - menu - settings, I do not have an option for send/receive nor can I find any frequency option. I have the HTC Dream. Any suggestions??

http://www.AndroidPolice.com Artem Russakovskii

Are you using the Mail app or the Gmail app? I don't think the Gmail app has the frequency settings.

francetraveller

You are correct I am using the GMail app. My actual problem is that I did something and my GMail no longer updates itself, I have to click refresh every time. I am trying to switch it back to the way it was.

:Steven

Just go to Settings > Applications > Manage Apps > Gmail and select Clear Data and Force Stop. (Do the same thing for Gmail Storage) This should clear all settings and emails. I sometimes have issues with email not arriving and this fixes it.

Thorn

Thank you for this article. Turning off the stock gmail and checking it manually has doubled the life of my battery, easily. It would probably last two days with little call time used now.

Btw, I've used Pandora (music streaming) for a couple hours straight with only about a 25% loss in battery, which I think is pretty solid especially in comparison to what the email polling was doing. Thats just silly.

Jeff

I simply downloaded advanced task cleaner 2.0 and my battery lasts all night at work and my phone up loads e mail as often as possible

massive improvement, since about 430am used 48% thats about 18hours ago, battery untill now which is really really good..... havent used phone as much as i wanted to see what was happening... did use app called phono give details of signal strength etc but found out that was also killing my battery,,, but the above email tips are spot on thank you....

Totototor

You can try to disable 3G (WCDMA) and keep to 2G (GSM) by default, you will have lot more of battery life.

On a Samsung galaxy S, after froyo 2.2 upgrade, the linux throttling is activated, at full frequency I have about 1000 bogomips, and at low frequency (automatic when no cpu task is running), 200 bogomips, the frequency is no more displayed in 2.2 (they perhaps are afraid that customer complain about a 100 or 200 Mhz CPU instead of a 1Ghz CPU), but I seen in /sys parameters that conservative mode is used and can go down to 100 Mhz :
$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_max_freq
1000000
$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_min_freq
100000
$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_governors
ondemand userspace powersave conservative performance
$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
conservative

Techno-igno

Useful information. I need it dumbed down further. Where on the htc Android do I go to access the email settings? Also, does having a shorter/longer power off period make a difference to battery life?

http://www.JuiceDefender.com Albie

Nice article!
Just wanted to point out that there is a very powerful (recently improved) battery manager app in the Android market called JuiceDefender, which can do all the micro-tweaking on auto allowing a much more energy-efficient usage of the phone.

Simply put, JuiceDefender intelligently manages some of the most battery-draining components (GPS, WiFi, etc.), powering them only when they are actually needed ...rather than leaving them on all the time. And it does much more than that, it's literally full packed with features for battery consumption optimization (connectivity scheduling, location-aware controls, battery threshold controls, etc.). It's quite amazing what it can do.

JuiceDefender is free, fully customizable and fully automatic, meaning that it only needs to be set up once, and then it runs by itself improving battery life from behind the scene - you won't need to touch it again!

You can find some video reviews on JuiceDefender’s Facebook page and more info on its website.
Hope that helps!

http://www.stevethemanmann.com Steve Mann

I tweaked the snot out of my phone and wrote a guide that helps keep your Android running all day. http://amzn.to/pJIHyx

http://101wisconsin.weborglodge.com Chris

@steven I can't thank you enough! I've been vexed with this problem too. I use another email app, but of course, Gmail was always there in the background. At the very least, I've identified the problem with my phone and can do a quick fix when it rears its ugly head again. Thank you, sir!